


Beck and Call

by Celandine



Series: Narnia Sequence [1]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Boarding School, Ficlet, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 06:11:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4993288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celandine/pseuds/Celandine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edmund hates being a fag.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beck and Call

**Author's Note:**

  * For [realpestilence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/realpestilence/gifts).



> For Realpestilence, who wanted Edmund, solitary by necessity and nature both. He's not precisely solitary here, but certainly wishes he were.
> 
> "Fag" here is used in the older sense of a junior student who acts as a servant to a senior.

"Oi, Pevensie!"

Edmund hastily pushed away his papers and books and stood up. Wilson was the worst of the prefects, and Edmund had learned never to give him any cause for dissatisfaction if he could possibly help it. It was late afternoon, the usual hour for games, but a settled and icy rain had kept the entire school indoors to study, which meant that he was at Wilson's beck and call.

"Toast and tea," Wilson ordered him with a twist of the mouth that boded ill if Edmund's offering did not meet his standards.

The tea wasn't so difficult, but Edmund hated trying to make toast over the fire, jostling against the other fags and their toasting forks. Half the time at least he burned it and had to start over, with Wilson fuming at the delay.

"Here, sir," he said at last. The toast was perfectly browned, butter dripping through—Wilson always wanted plenty of butter and jam, Edmund would have thought he would weigh more than eleven stones given how much he ate—and the tea had milk and two sugars, as always.

He hated having to call the prefects "sir." He hated being a fag. Peter had never had to be one, the lucky dog. Just because he was good at cricket _and_ rugby _and_ rowing, whereas Edmund was only halfway decent at rugby on a good day. It wasn't his fault he was nearly the smallest in his year, still, even if Father said he had been a late bloomer himself and Edmund might well be too.

No one ever really explained why there had to be prefects and fags, anyhow, except to mumble things about learning respect and paying one's dues.

Making toast and tea for Wilson, even calling him "sir," wasn't the worst of it. That came later in the evening, when Wilson might decide to pull out the paddle he had "inherited" from his own prefect. There never seemed any particular reason why he chose one night rather than another, so Edmund lived each evening in dread. The paddle excited Wilson—he supposed that was the point—and then he'd make Edmund… 

He forced himself to not think of it, to take back the plate and teacup to the buttery, to return to his Latin and geography, wishing futilely that he could somehow escape.

But there was no escape. There was only this.


End file.
